I danced with Amazon once (casually, I have zero desire to move to a Pacific Coast state), and had a similar "first step" experience, just with no webcam. Had they asked me to code on a webcam I too would've refused. At this point I don't recall if it was CollabEdit, InterviewStreet, or something similar (it's been some time and I deleted the emails), but I remember that if I tabbed out of the interview page at any time I would instantly fail it. And here I thought that was bad.... Leaning out of frame fails you? Wow.

For comparison's sake I'm an experienced dev and have been hacking on embedded Linux stuff for more than a decade, though I have doubts that's the trigger for "webcam or not."

Was there any data retention period mentioned regarding your interview? Do they keep those videos forever, or are they discarded as soon as they're reviewed (assuming they're not live)?